Google-CloudVertexBot
Google · Live retrieval · robots.txt token google-cloudvertexbot
1% of 30,177 measured domains disallow google-cloudvertexbot in robots.txt at the site root. Separately, and independently of robots.txt, 17.4% of 30,185 reachable domains refuse an AI crawler user agent at the network edge on two consecutive probes from different locations - a refusal the site's own robots.txt does not declare and its owner often has not chosen.
Measured 2026-10-06 by direct request to every domain in the corpus. Method: how this is measured. Reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Cite as: Crawl Census, "Google-CloudVertexBot blocking rate", measured 2026-10-06. https://crawlcensus.com/bot/google-cloudvertexbot
What it is definition
Crawls sites at a site owner's request to build Vertex AI agents; no effect on Google Search.
Google-CloudVertexBot is operated by Google and classified here as live retrieval. These agents fetch a single URL because a user asked about it. Disallowing one means the assistant answers from an older copy or from someone else's summary instead of the live page. Several are documented as not bound by robots.txt, because the request is user-initiated rather than a crawl.
Disallowing google-cloudvertexbot stops the fetch that happens when a user asks Vertex AI agents about one of your URLs. The answer still gets written, from an older copy or from a third party's description of the page, and you no longer control what it says.
- robots.txt token
- google-cloudvertexbot
- Operator
- Purpose
- Live retrieval
- Honors robots.txt
- yes
- Documentation
- https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-common-crawlers
Identity on the wire exact string
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-CloudVertexBot; +https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-bot)curl -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-CloudVertexBot; +https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-bot)' https://example.com/Replace the host with your own. A 403, a challenge page or an empty body means the edge is blocking the agent whatever robots.txt says.
How to allow it, how to block it robots.txt
User-agent: google-cloudvertexbot
Allow: /Absent any rule, the agent is already allowed, so this group only matters when your * group disallows something. Naming the agent replaces the * group for it entirely, so repeat here every disallow you still want to apply to it.
User-agent: google-cloudvertexbot
Disallow: /Disallowing google-cloudvertexbot stops the fetch that happens when a user asks Vertex AI agents about one of your URLs. The answer still gets written, from an older copy or from a third party's description of the page, and you no longer control what it says.
Sites that block it 60 shown
See every measured domain that blocks Google-CloudVertexBot
This list is served from a cache rebuilt just now. It is discarded the moment a rescan records a policy change for this agent, so a site that has just changed its robots.txt will drop off it within one scan rather than waiting for the cache to expire.
Compare Google
Google runs 5 agents in this registry, and they do different jobs. Blocking one says nothing about the others.
Common questions answered
Does blocking Google-CloudVertexBot remove me from Vertex AI agents?
Partly. Google-CloudVertexBot fetches a page only when a user asks about it, so disallowing it does not delist you from Vertex AI agents. It does mean the answer is composed without your live page, from a stale copy or a third-party summary.
How do I verify Google-CloudVertexBot requests are genuine?
Run a reverse DNS lookup on the source address. It must resolve to a host under googlebot.com or google.com, and a forward lookup of that host must return the same address. Google also publishes its crawler ranges as JSON, so an address match works when reverse DNS is unavailable.
Check your own site free
See whether your robots.txt admits Google-CloudVertexBot today, and whether your edge agrees with it.